System and method for a workload management and scheduling module to manage access to a compute environment according to local and non-local user identity information

ABSTRACT

A system, method and computer-readable media for managing a compute environment are disclosed. The method includes importing identity information from an identity manager into a module performs workload management and scheduling for a compute environment and, unless a conflict exists, modifying the behavior of the workload management and scheduling module to incorporate the imported identity information such that access to and use of the compute environment occurs according to the imported identity information. The compute environment may be a cluster or a grid wherein multiple compute environments communicate with multiple identity managers.

PRIORITY CLAIM

The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 13/466,499, filed May 8, 2012, which is a continuation of U.S.patent application Ser. No. 11/207,438, filed Aug. 19, 2005, now U.S.Pat. No. 8,176,490, issued May 8, 2012, which claims priority to U.S.Provisional Application No. 60/603,296 filed Aug. 20, 2004, the contentsof which are incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND

1. Field of the Disclosure

The present disclosure relates to managing workload and scheduling in acompute environment such as a cluster or grid and more specifically to asystem and method of providing an interface between a workloadmanagement and scheduling module for a compute environment and anidentity manager.

2. Introduction

The present disclosure relates to a system and method of allocationresources in the context of a grid or cluster of computers. Gridcomputing may be defined as coordinated resource sharing and problemsolving in dynamic, multi-institutional collaborations. Many computingprojects require much more computational power and resources than asingle computer or single processor may provide. Networked computerswith peripheral resources such as printers, scanners, I/O devices,storage disks, scientific devices and instruments, etc. may need to becoordinated and utilized to complete a task or a job.

Grid/cluster resource management generally describes the process ofidentifying requirements, matching resources to applications, allocatingthose resources, and scheduling and monitoring compute resources overtime in order to run applications and workload as efficiently aspossible. Each project will utilize a different set of resources andthus is typically unique. In addition to the challenge of allocatingresources for a particular job, administrators also have difficultyobtaining a clear understanding of the resources available, the currentstatus of the compute environment and real-time competing needs ofvarious users. One aspect of this process is the ability to reserveresources for a job. A workload manager will seek to reserve a set ofresources to enable the compute environment to process a job at apromised quality of service. One example of workload management softwareis the various compute environment management software available fromCluster Resources, Inc., such as the Moab™ Workload Manager, Moab™Cluster Manager, the Moab™ Grid Suite and the Moab™ Cluster Suite.

General background information on clusters and grids may be found inseveral publications. See, e.g., Grid Resource Management, State of theArt and Future Trends, Jarek Nabrzyski, Jennifer M. Schopf, and JanWeglarz, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004; and Beowulf Cluster Computingwith Linux, edited by William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, and Thomas Sterling,Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003.

It is generally understood herein that the terms grid and cluster areinterchangeable in that there is no specific definition of either. Ingeneral, a grid will include a plurality of clusters as will be shown inFIG. 1A. Several general challenges exist when attempting to maximizeresources in a grid. First, there are typically multiple layers of gridand cluster schedulers. A grid 100 generally includes a group ofclusters or a group of networked computers. The definition of a grid isvery flexible and may mean a number of different configurations ofcomputers. The definition may depend on how a compute environment isadministered and controlled via local control (clusters) or globalcontrol/administration (grids). The introduction here is meant to begeneral given the variety of configurations that are possible.

A grid scheduler 102 communicates with a plurality of cluster schedulers104A, 104B and 104C. Each of these cluster schedulers communicates witha respective resource manager 106A, 106B or 106C. Each resource managercommunicates with a respective series of compute resources shown asnodes 108A, 108B, 108C in cluster 110, nodes 108D, 108E, 108F in cluster112 and nodes 108G, 108H, 1081 in cluster 114.

Local schedulers (which may refer to either the cluster schedulers 104or the resource managers 106) are closer to the specific resources 108and may not allow grid schedulers 102 direct access to the resources.Examples of compute resources include data storage devices such as harddrives and computer processors. The grid level scheduler 102 typicallydoes not own or control the actual resources. Therefore, jobs aresubmitted from the high level grid-scheduler 102 to a local set ofresources with no more permissions that the user would have. Thisreduces efficiencies and can render the reservation process moredifficult. When jobs are submitted from a grid level scheduler 102,there is access information about the person, group or entity submittingthe job. For example, the identity of the person submitting the job mayhave associated with him or her a group of restrictions but alsoguarantees of service, such as a guarantee that 64 processors will beavailable within 1 hour of a job submission.

The heterogeneous nature of the shared resources also causes a reductionin efficiency. Without dedicated access to a resource, the grid levelscheduler 102 is challenged with the high degree of variance andunpredictability in the capacity of the resources available for use.Most resources are shared among users and projects and each projectvaries from the other. The performance goals for projects differ. Gridresources are used to improve performance of an application but theresource owners and users have different performance goals: fromoptimizing the performance for a single application to getting the bestsystem throughput or minimizing response time. Local policies may alsoplay a role in performance.

Within a given cluster, there is only a concept of resource managementin space. An administrator can partition a cluster and identify a set ofresources to be dedicated to a particular purpose and another set ofresources can be dedicated to another purpose. In this regard, theresources are reserved in advance to process the job. By beingconstrained in space, the nodes108A, 108B, 108C, if they needmaintenance or for administrators to perform work or provisioning on thenodes, have to be taken out of the system, fragmented permanently orpartitioned permanently for special purposes or policies. If theadministrator wants to dedicate them to particular users, organizationsor groups, the prior art method of resource management in space causestoo much management overhead requiring a constant adjustment of theconfiguration of the cluster environment and also losses in efficiencywith the fragmentation associated with meeting particular policies.

Reservations of compute resources were introduced above. To manage thejobs submissions, a cluster scheduler will employ reservations to insurethat jobs will have the resources necessary for processing. FIG. 1Billustrates a cluster/node diagram for a cluster 110 with nodes 120.Time is along the X axis. An access control list (ACL) 114 to thecluster is static, meaning that the ACL is based on the credentials ofthe person, group, account, class or quality of service making therequest or job submission to the cluster. The ACL 114 determines whatjobs get assigned to the cluster 110 via a reservation 112 shown asspanning into two nodes of the cluster. Either the job can be allocatedto the cluster or it can't and the decision is determined based on whosubmits the job at submission time. Further, in environments where thereare multiple clusters associated with a grid and workload is transferredaround the grid, there is a continual difficulty of managingrestrictions and guarantees associated with each entity that can submitjobs. Each cluster will have constant alterations made to users andgroups as well as modifications of the respective compute environment.Currently, there is no mechanism to insure that up-to-date identityinformation for a particular user where workload submitted by that usermay be transferred to an on-demand site or to a remote cluster from thesubmitter's local environment.

One deficiency with the prior approach is that there are situations inwhich organizations would like to make resources available but only insuch a way as to balance or meet certain performance goals.Particularly, groups may want to establish a constant expansion factorand make that available to all users or they may want to make a certainsubset of users that are key people in an organization and give themspecial services when their response time drops below a certainthreshold. Given the prior art model, companies are unable to have theflexibility over their cluster resources. Further, given the complexityof the interaction between various compute environments, it becomesdifficult to insure that the priority identity information associatedwith the key people will be enforced if workload from those individualsis transferred to another compute environment for processing.

As mentioned above, a challenge in the cluster and grid computingenvironment relates to management of non-local user credentials forworkload. For example, as on-demand computing centers come on-line thatenable a cluster or a grid to send jobs or workload in an overflowcapacity to the on-demand center, there are situations where non-localusers and groups have specific credentials that define constraints oneach person or group's rights and limits to use of the computeresources. This may occur, for example, where workload may flow into acompute environment that has non-local user jobs. Where a cluster or onecompute environment may communicate with an on-demand center, or acluster communicating with another cluster, and so forth, there aredifficulties in managing and maintaining the constraints on each user'scredentials (whether the user is local or non-local) for accessing thelocal compute environment.

To improve the management of compute resources, what is needed in theart is a system and method for a workload management and schedulingmodule to manage access to the compute environment according to localand non-local user credentials as the module interacts with othermodules and other outside entities.

SUMMARY

Additional features and advantages of the disclosure will be set forthin the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from thedescription, or may be learned by practice of the disclosure. Thefeatures and advantages of the disclosure may be realized and obtainedby means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out inthe appended claims. These and other features of the present disclosurewill become more fully apparent from the following description andappended claims, or may be learned by the practice of the disclosure asset forth herein.

The disclosure addresses the need to manage user credentials as a localcompute environment interacts with outside entities such as an identitymanager. The disclosure includes a system, method and computer-readablemedium that manage a compute environment. The method embodiment includesimporting identity information from an identity manager into a modulethat performs workload management and scheduling for a computeenvironment and unless a conflict exists, modifying the behavior of theworkload management and scheduling module to incorporate the importedidentity information such that access to and use of the computeenvironment occurs according to the imported identity information. Theidentity manager may be a file, a database, or a service that is acentralized and coordinated database of identity information, such asusers, groups, accounts, qualities of service, and classes.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to describe the manner in which the above-recited and otheradvantages and features of the disclosure can be obtained, a moreparticular description of the disclosure briefly described above will berendered by reference to specific embodiments thereof which areillustrated in the appended drawings. Understanding that these drawingsdepict only typical embodiments of the disclosure and are not thereforeto be considered to be limiting of its scope, the disclosure will bedescribed and explained with additional specificity and detail throughthe use of the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1A illustrates generally a grid scheduler, cluster scheduler, andresource managers interacting with compute nodes;

FIG. 1B illustrates a job submitted to a resource set in a computingenvironment;

FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary system according to an aspect of thedisclosure;

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary compute environment associated with thedisclosure; and

FIG. 4 illustrates a method of managing a compute environment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Various embodiments of the disclosure are discussed in detail below.While specific implementations are discussed, it should be understoodthat this is done for illustration purposes only. A person skilled inthe relevant art will recognize that other components and configurationsmay be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the disclosure.

The present disclosure relates to resource reservations in the contextof a compute environment. The environment may be operated by a hostingfacility, on-demand center, hosting center, a virtual hosting center,data center, grid, cluster and/or utility-based computing environments.The system aspect of the disclosure includes a computing device thatoperates software that practices the steps of the disclosure to managecompute resources. There are many known types of computing devices thatare known to those of skill in the art and that are acceptable as thesystem embodiment of the disclosure. The computing device may be asingle device or a plurality of connected computing devices that enablethe disclosure to be practiced.

For a user or an administrator, a graphical user interface is presentedfor interacting with the workload management software. It is alsocontemplated that the system may include features such as multi-modalinterfaces for ease of interaction and control of the computeenvironment. For example, the graphical user interface may utilizenatural language dialog, touch-screen input, motion detection input,gesture input, mouse input or a combination of these types of input toenable improved efficiency for users and administrators of the computeenvironment. These are discussed more below.

The software operating within the system is included of computer programmodules written in a computing language, such as the C programminglanguage or any other suitable programming language. The programmingmodules include all the necessary programming to communicate with thecompute environment (i.e., such as the cluster/grid) and both receiveinformation about the compute resources within the compute environmentand also manage the reservation and use of those compute resources.

The primary aspect of the disclosure included herein relates to theconcept of managing the interface between a compute environment (or thesoftware that manages the workload and scheduling of a computeenvironment) and an external identity manager that maintains acentralized database of identity information for users, groups and otherentities. Therefore, the system embodiment of the disclosure willinclude the various modules that practice the steps of the methodembodiment of the disclosure included herein. For example, a system formanaging compute resources within a compute environment may includemeans for importing identity information from an identity manager into amodule that performs workload management and scheduling for the computeenvironment and means for, unless a conflict exists, modifying thebehavior of the module to incorporate the imported identity informationsuch that access to and use of the compute environment occurs accordingto the imported identity information. The means for performing this maybe, as mentioned above, computer programmed modules within a softwarepackage that perform these steps on a computing device(s). The workloadmanagement and scheduling module may include, at least one of a resourcemanager, a grid manager, a cluster scheduler, a cluster workload manageror a grid workload manager.

FIG. 2 and the related discussion are intended to provide a brief,general description of a suitable computing environment in which thedisclosure may be implemented. Although not required, the disclosurewill be described, at least in part, in the general context ofcomputer-executable instructions, such as program modules, beingexecuted by a personal computer. Generally, program modules includeroutine programs, objects, components, data structures, etc. thatperform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types.Moreover, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the disclosuremay be practiced with other computer system configurations, includinghand-held devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based orprogrammable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframecomputers, and the like. The disclosure may also be practiced indistributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remoteprocessing devices that are linked through a communications network. Ina distributed computing environment, program modules may be located inboth local and remote memory storage devices.

With reference to FIG. 2, an exemplary system for implementing thedisclosure includes a general-purpose computing device 200, including aprocessing unit (CPU) 220, a system memory 230, and a system bus 210that couples various system components including the system memory 230to the processing unit 220. It can be appreciated that the disclosuremay operate on a computing device with more than one CPU 220 or on agroup or cluster of computing devices networked together to providegreater processing capability. The system bus 210 may be any of severaltypes of bus structures including a memory bus 210 or memory controller,a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of busarchitectures. The system may also include other memory such as readonly memory (ROM) 240 and random access memory (RAM) 250. A basicinput/output (BIOS), containing the basic routine that helps to transferinformation between elements within the computing device 200, such asduring start-up, is typically stored in ROM 240.

The computing device 200 further includes storage means such as a harddisk drive 260, a magnetic disk drive, an optical disk drive, tape driveor the like. The storage device 260 is connected to the system bus 210by a drive interface. The drives and the associated computer readablemedia provide nonvolatile storage of computer readable instructions,data structures, program modules and other data for the computing device200. The basic components are known to those of skill in the art andappropriate variations are contemplated depending on the type of device,such as whether the device is a small, handheld computing device, adesktop computer, or a computer server.

To enable user interaction with the computing device 200, an inputdevice 270 represents any number of input mechanisms, such as amicrophone for speech, a touch-sensitive screen for gesture or graphicalinput, keyboard, mouse, motion detection input, natural language speechinteraction and so forth. The device output 280 can also be one or moreof a number of output means. In some instances, multimodal systemsenable a user to provide multiple types of input to communicate with thecomputing device 200. The communications interface 290 generally governsand manages the user input and system output.

Prior to discussing the other aspects of the disclosure, some otherexplanatory information is provided about reservations and the accesscontrol list shown in FIG. 1B. The ACL for reservations may have adynamic aspect or may be based on who the requester is. The ACL decisionmaking process is based at least in part on the current level of serviceor response time that is being delivered to the requester. To illustratethe operation of the ACL, assume that a user submits a job and that theACL reports that the only jobs that can access these resources are thosethat have a queue time that currently exceeds two hours. The ACL willalso have information about the credentials and constraints for thatuser, such as this is a user in a group that is only allowed to accessthe compute environment after 5 pm, or is limited to 64 processors and 2GB of memory. If the job has sat in the queue for two hours it will thenaccess the additional resources to prevent the queue time for the userfrom increasing significantly beyond this time frame. The decision toallocate these additional resources can be keyed off of utilization ofan expansion factor and other performance metrics of the job.

In some cases, a local environment 304 may have configuration files orconfiguration information that may conflict with exported identityinformation from an identity manager 302. There are precedent rules thatcan manage conflicts between local information and exported information.For example, one version of the disclosure may have more credentials fora user or a group. Based on the precedent rules or other conflict rules,one version of the data (local or exported) may have priority over theother version of the data. The conflict rules may therefore resolve infavor of either direction. The IDM may also include credentialrelationship information such as relationships between groups, users,accounts, and so forth.

Whether or not an ACL is satisfied is typically and preferablydetermined by the scheduler 104A. There is no restriction regardingwhere or on what node in the network the process of making theseallocation of resource decisions occurs. The scheduler 104A is able tomonitor all aspects of the request by looking at the current job insidethe queue, the user credentials, and how long it has sat there and whatthe response time target is and the scheduler itself determines whetherall requirements of the ACL are satisfied. If requirements aresatisfied, it releases the resources that are available to the job. Ajob in the queue can then consume resources and the schedulercommunicates this to the scheduler 104A. If resources are allocated, thejob is taken from the queue and inserted into the reservation in thecluster or compute environment.

An example benefit of this model is that it makes it significantlyeasier for a site to balance or provide guaranteed levels of service orconstant levels of service for key players or the general populace.Important users (users with less constraints and more access to thecompute environment) and the general populace may include local users orusers that have workload that is sent to the compute environment asoverflow.

Having discussed the ACL and its role in controlling access to thecompute environment, next the context of the present disclosure isdiscussed with reference to FIG. 3. The network 300 shown in FIG. 3illustrates an example of the interaction between an identity manager(IDM) 302 and at least one compute environment (C.E.) 304 havingmanagement software (M) 312. Computer environment 308 is shown withmanagement software (M) 314. An example of the management software isCluster Resources' Moab Workload Manager™ and Moab Scheduler™. Theworkload manager and scheduler software or module will control andmanage access to and use of the local compute environment 304. The IDM302 is external to the compute environment 304 and provides for acentralized coordination of identity information. Examples of the typesof identity information that may be stored and managed by the IDM 302include, but is not limited to, information associated with: users,groups, accounts (or projects), qualities of service, classes, contactinformation for users (such as email, address, phone number, etc),credential types, attributes of the credential types, resource accessinformation, credential relationship information (such as relationshipsbetween one credential and another, default credential information,access lists), priorities, fairshare targets, service guarantees,deadlines, service access, resource constraints, billing informationsuch as charge rates, balances, etc., global utilization information,and so forth. The IDM 302 information may be static or dynamic. Any typeof identity information for a user or a group or any entity may begathered by and reside in the IDM 302. The IDM 302 may be a service andmay operate with software such as the Oracle® database software.

The IDM 302 may have information associated with at least one of defaultcredential associations and credential specification constraints. Thedefault credential associations define credentials for users where nospecified constraints exist and credential specification constraintsfurther include constraints related to at least one of: a service levelagreement, priority information, usage limit information, fairsharetargets, service guarantees, resource constraints, usage statistics,contact information and billing information.

There are several benefits to having a centralized location for identityinformation is that where there are a number of compute environments(304, 308), each with local management modules (such as 312, 314). Forexample, centralized management of identity information provides fordynamic control of the identity information that is accessible to alllocal workload management and scheduling models. There is the ability tointegrate the IDM 302 with other external systems 306 (represented witha generic “X”). For example, the Internet may provide a means for usersto input and/or modify identity information that can be transmitted andstored via the IDM 302. Other sources from the Internet or network mayalso be sources of data for the IDM such as a company internal databaseof users. Furthermore, with an IDM 302 there is no need to maintainreplicated databases at each local site.

The IDM 302 will communicate data to compute environments 304,308 andreceive data from the compute environments 304, 308. For example, localinformation 310 based on local utilization of resources, local identityinformation that is identified, and so forth may be obtained by thelocal workload manager 312 and forwarded to the IDM 302. As an example,while running a job, the local workload manager 312 may obtain a newlisting or an updated listing of the contact information, credential andaccess information for the users in a local group such as a sciencedepartment. The workload manager 312 may then forward that informationabout the local group to the IDM 302. In that case, if workload fromthat local group needs to overflow from compute environment 304 tocompute environment 308, that identity information is already containedin IDM 302 and accessible such that those constraints will be maintainedfor that workload that consumes resources in compute environment 308.

Only a portion of the IDM 302 information may be accessed by any localcompute environment 304, 308. In order words, perhaps only theinformation that pertains to the local environment will be received bythe environment 304, 308. The local workload management and schedulingmodule will utilize the IDM 302 information as well as any localconfiguration information and identity information if necessary toobtain a global view based on all the available information. The globalview includes all the local and non-local information necessary tomanage the local resources. For example, with the identity informationof non-local users that have access to the local compute environment toprocess overflow workload, the local manager can obtain the global viewof users and possible users that may access the environment.

The workload manager and scheduling module 312 associated with a localenvironment 304 may continuously exchange information with the IDM 302in various ways. For example, the local environment may forwardinformation as it obtains it or periodically transmit new informationand new records to the IDM 302. The interface is a generalized interfacebetween the local environment and the IDM 302. For example, theinformation may be communicated by a generic interface such as standardscript-based reporting, web-related or web service protocols, SQLsupported protocols or any generalized means of communicating this dataas would be understood by those of skill in the art.

Returning to FIG. 3, the feature 306 may also refer to another IDM 306.An aspect of this disclosure is that through utilizing the generalizedcommunication protocol between an IDM and a local compute environment,one or more IDMs can communicate with one or more computingenvironments. Each IDM may store and/or manage a different type ofinformation. There is no specific requirement that there be a singleIDM. In this scenario, various groupings or virtual networks or groupsof compute resources may be identified for various reasons, such as toprocess a specific job or workload request. For example, anadministrative grouping of the IDM 302, the compute environment 304 andlocal resources 310 may be defined, reserved, and consumed for aparticular purpose. Similarly, a virtual environment including IDM 306and compute environment 308 communicating 306A with each other regardingidentity information may be established for a particular purpose aswell. Providing one or more IDMs communication with one or more computeenvironments each compute environment operating with workload managementand scheduling modules such as MOAB™ provides an increased amount offlexibility and sharing and distribution of workload across a complexand grouping of compute environments.

The global view referenced above for any compute environment is obtainedby gathering and processing all available data which includes local dataon users, groups, etc. and the exported IDM 302 data, whether it is allthe exported and available data at the IDM 302 or only the portionrelevant to the respective compute environment 304. This global orholistic view enables the compute environment 304 (perhaps morespecifically the workload manager and scheduler module associated withthe environment) to understand both the local needs but also externalneeds that may consume local resources.

FIG. 4 illustrates a method embodiment of the disclosure. The method ispreferably practiced by a workload management and scheduling softwaremodule associated with a compute environment. The method may bepracticed by any computing device or group of computing devices. Themethod of managing a compute environment method includes importingidentity information from an identity manager into a module thatperforms workload management and scheduling for a compute environment(402) and, unless a conflict exists, modifying the behavior of theworkload management and scheduling module to incorporate the importedidentity information such that access to and use of the computeenvironment occurs according to the imported identity information (404).

The various features discussed herein may be utilized as part of thesteps of the method embodiment of the disclosure. There may be multipleIDM's and multiple modules that continuously or periodically import andexport identity information.

Embodiments within the scope of the present disclosure may also includecomputer-readable media for carrying or having computer-executableinstructions or data structures stored thereon. Such computer-readablemedia can be any available media that can be accessed by a generalpurpose or special purpose computer. By way of example, and notlimitation, such computer-readable media can include RAM, ROM, EEPROM,CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or othermagnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to carryor store desired program code means in the form of computer-executableinstructions or data structures. When information is transferred orprovided over a network or another communications connection (eitherhardwired, wireless, or combination thereof) to a computer, the computerproperly views the connection as a computer-readable medium. Thus, anysuch connection is properly termed a computer-readable medium.Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope ofthe computer-readable media.

Computer-executable instructions include, for example, instructions anddata which cause a general purpose computer, special purpose computer,or special purpose processing device to perform a certain function orgroup of functions. Computer-executable instructions also includeprogram modules that are executed by computers in stand-alone or networkenvironments. Generally, program modules include routines, programs,objects, components, and data structures, etc. that perform particulartasks or implement particular abstract data types. Computer-executableinstructions, associated data structures, and program modules representexamples of the program code means for executing steps of the methodsdisclosed herein. The particular sequence of such executableinstructions or associated data structures represents examples ofcorresponding acts for implementing the functions described in suchsteps.

Those of skill in the art will appreciate that other embodiments of thedisclosure may be practiced in network computing environments with manytypes of computer system configurations, including personal computers,hand-held devices, multi-processor systems, microprocessor-based orprogrammable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframecomputers, and the like. Embodiments may also be practiced indistributed computing environments where tasks are performed by localand remote processing devices that are linked (either by hardwiredlinks, wireless links, or by a combination thereof) through acommunications network. In a distributed computing environment, programmodules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.

Although the above description may contain specific details, they shouldnot be construed as limiting the claims in any way. Other configurationsof the described embodiments of the disclosure are part of the scope ofthis disclosure. Accordingly, the appended claims and their legalequivalents should only define the disclosure, rather than any specificexamples given.

I claim:
 1. A method comprising: importing identity information from anidentity manager into a management module that performs workloadmanagement and scheduling of workload for consumption of resources in acompute environment, wherein the identity information comprisescredentials associated with at least one of users, groups of users,accounts, projects, classes, queues and qualities of service; resolvingany conflict between the identity information and other information toyield a resolution; and modifying a behavior of the management module toincorporate the resolution such that a decision for resources in thecompute environment is based at least in part on the resolution.
 2. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the other information is from a differententity than the identity manager.
 3. The method of claim 1, whereinresolving any conflict between the identity manager and the otherinformation comprises determining in advance which source of informationbetween the identity manager and another entity, which is the source ofthe other information, is more authoritative.
 4. The method of claim 1,wherein the identity manager is at least one of: a text file, a databaseor a service.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the management modulefurther comprises at least one of a resource manager, a grid manager, acluster scheduler and a workload manager.
 6. The method of claim 1,wherein importing identity information from the identity manager furthercomprises importing identity information from a plurality of identitymanagers.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein each identity manager of theplurality of identity managers has a different type of information. 8.The method of claim 1, wherein the identity manager further comprisesinformation associated with at least one of default credentialassociations and credential specification constraints.
 9. The method ofclaim 8, wherein the default credential associations define credentialsfor users where no specified constraints exist and credentialspecification constraints further comprise constraints related to atleast one of: a service level agreement, priority information, usagelimit information, fairshare targets, service guarantees, resourceconstraints, usage statistics, contact information and billinginformation.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein the identity manager isassociated with a service that receives identity information from anylocation including the management module.
 11. The method of claim 10,wherein the identity manager receives identity information from at leastone of: the Internet, administrator input, another identity manager, andanother management module.
 12. The method of claim 1, wherein themanagement module obtains a global view of users and groups based on theidentity information and from locally obtained identity information. 13.The method of claim 1, wherein the identity information from theidentity manager into the management module comprises a subset of theidentity information in the identity manager which is relevant to thecompute environment managed by the management module.
 14. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising: exporting from the management modulelocally obtained identity information to the identity manager.
 15. Themethod of claim 13, wherein exporting the locally obtained identityinformation further comprises periodically exporting the locallyobtained identity information as new identity information is discoveredby the management module.
 16. The method of claim 1, wherein a pluralityof identity managers and a plurality of management modules import andexport the identity information.
 17. The method of claim 1, wherein ifthe conflict is resolved in favor of the other identity information,then the management module manages access to and use of the computeenvironment according to the other information.
 18. The method of claim1, wherein the identity manager interfaces with the management moduleaccording to a generic interface.
 19. A system for managing a computeenvironment, the system comprising: a processor; and a non-transitorycomputer-readable storage medium storing instructions, which, whenexecuted by the processor, cause the processor to perform operationscomprising: importing identity information from an identity manager intoa management module that performs workload management and scheduling ofworkload for consumption of resources in a compute environment, whereinthe identity information comprises credentials associated with at leastone of users, groups of users, accounts, projects, classes, queues andqualities of service; resolving any conflict between the identityinformation and other information to yield a resolution; and modifying abehavior of the management module to incorporate the resolution suchthat a scheduling decision for resources in the compute environment isbased at least in part on the resolution.
 20. A non-transitorycomputer-readable storage device storing instructions, which, whenexecuted by a processor, cause the processor to perform operationscomprising: importing identity information from an identity manager intoa management module that performs workload management and scheduling ofworkload for consumption of resources in a compute environment, whereinthe identity information comprises credentials associated with at leastone of users, groups of users, accounts, projects, classes, queues andqualities of service; resolving any conflict between the identityinformation and other information to yield a resolution; and modifying abehavior of the management module to incorporate the resolution suchthat a scheduling decision for resources in the compute environment isbased at least in part on the resolution.